Enda Vaneera

Way, way back I posted that we in Ireland had had a General Election. I *think* it was actually 70 days ago. Nobody won (which is no surprise here in this land of coalition governments) and the various factions have been negotiating (or failing to talk) ever since so that even the political journo's have started to sound weary and impatient. Would the 2 main parties (Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil) actually get together after 100 years of the main differences being what they thought about Partition (Ireland split into the Republic and 'The North')? Would we need some kind of Rainbow coalition of Fine Gael plus assorted minor parties and some Independent Members (TDs)? Well, they finally came up with a solution today and re-elected the previous "Taoiseach" (=Prime Minister, say it 'Tea-shuck'), Enda Kenny, though for how long this fragile peace can stick is anybody's guess. It got me to thinking about our various milestones and anniversaries here.

Looking decidedly nervous in this 4 year old pic, releasing
our first Irish chickens

Facebook has to take a lot of the 'blame' for my train of thought. They have got into a 'thing' now where they ping you pictures which you posted exactly 2, 3, 4 or 5 years ago and ask you if you want to share them back onto FB and comment on them. They dug up this 4 year old one of me releasing our first ever Irish chooks from their carry-box. I look very nervous. Nowadays I'd just tip the box on its side and let them walk out. They were our "Lovely Girls"; 6 (quickly reduced to 5) Sussex Ponte Hybrids. We were so green I'd even bought the "wrong" chooks - I'd intended to buy proper pure bred While/Light Sussex (Hadn't heard of Sussex Ponte). 4 years on we are evolving over to Buff Orpingtons and Cuckoo Marans and we have only one of these original birds left - we call her Enda (as in Enda Vaneera....geddit?.... and, yes, I do know Enda is a boy's name).

Meanwhile the piglets come up towards their 14th week and the ducklings and poults are going on 6 weeks. We are charmed by the ducklings now starting to change from the 'peep peep' noise of new hatched ducklings to some proper throaty quacking. Their voices are breaking, Bless 'Em! Both these clutches are now let out all day as long as it is sunny and one of us will be around. They tend to stay in the main yard, though the chickens have wandered as far as the front lawn before 'zooming' back to safety in that amusing wings-flapping sprint young poults have.

Buff Orp poults at 6 weeks

Today we decided to try to herd the ducklings as far as the big pond. They were not that keen and very perturbed at being hooshed out of the familiar yard. I wondered whether the sight of that big body of water might kick some instinct in and they'd happily dive in and play. Not a bit of it. We let them go at the water's edge and all 6 sprinted back towards the cattle-race and the familiar safety of their tiny cat litter tray 'pond'. That can fit only one or two at once now and then only paddling up to their ankles. We may need an interim "kiddies' paddly pool" solution in the yard so that they can experience water where their feets do not touch bottom.

Brooding in stereo. 

Our long-term brooders (the geese and Barbara the turkey) are still playing the waiting game. The geese, we know, are sitting on at least 12 eggs but we can not know how long these eggs have been in there. 3 have been in from the start. We may have the usual goosey chaos as the two Mums (Aunts?) hop on and off the nest and steal each others eggs for safe-keeping while the other female is out grazing. We hope that they will also do the 'aunt' thing once hatching starts. I'll take these 2 day old out to the orchard if you could just sit on those other eggs in case we get any stragglers hatching. Madness.

Not a happy bunny. Tom the turkey misses his woman.

Tom, is feeling very woe-begone with his 'wife' away in the fields (we hope). He mopes around all day and does not display even to us when we are seated by the pond. Hang in there, Tom. The 16th or so might see herself re-appear with babies. We'll give it a fortnight more and then possibly, try to find you a new love.

Damsel fly pupal case

I am still plugging on with the '365' project and trying to ring the changes to give the village website a good variety from which to choose. It is going well. Liz has upwards of half a dozen contributors now (and is trying to encourage more) so we have pics of children, ride on mowers, vegetable seedlings, the hand-ball courts, sunsets, pictures done by the pre-school (and flags by the National School). I am still here as 'back stop' to make sure we have no blank days. The end of April had us all a quarter of the way through the project. Fair way to go yet.

New log stack in the making.

I have managed to blag a couple of old pallets locally, so  the project for the end of this week has been to create yet another log stack against the barn wall up in the "Rose Walk". K-Dub would be proud of me. I am trying to build this with near vertical faces and even binding in the corners with log versions of "coin stones" like a bit of stone work. The plan is to roof this stack with my curved corrugated iron sheeting from the hay barn (you can see this in the photo, centre left).

Hornwort in the big pond.

This stack will be a good 4 cubic metres so should represent years 3-4 (maybe 5) of my store. It is a good feeling to be in May 2016 and to know that we probably have wood stored now round to Winter 2021/2. It will certainly have a chance to season (dry out) well and would also be a good hidey-hole for plenty of mice and voles safe from our cats.

Big boys' toys? Wide-track turf-cutting machinery

Ah well. That's probably enough for this one.

Taking Stock

New species for 2016 - these Khaki Campbell ducklings

At this time of year we seem to accumulate livestock at a breathless rate with new species and baby animals turning up every week. I need to stop, take a moment and do a mental stock check on what we have here. I thought the readers might also like to know, so this post is a bit of an annotated list of the animals and birds we have as of 9th April 2016. In order of appearance, then, here goes.

Careful swimming lessons for the not-very-waterproof ducklings

Poultry - where it all began back in 2012 with our 5 "Lovely Girls", the Sussex Ponte hens. Only one of these ladies is still with us and we are trying to 'evolve' by natural wastage into a mainly Buff Orpington flock. The current chicken list is....

2 Buff Orpington Roosters (The Lieutenant and the Captain)
5 Buff Orpington hens including one of our own breeding last year (Remember "hen and one"?)
1 Sussex Ponte hen
1 Cuckoo Marans hen
2 Hubbard hens (0ne red, one white)
2 "Mini Buff" hybrid hens
That's 11 hens by my reckoning.

Eyes down - 8 sheep line up at the trough.

Other Poultry include

1 gander (George)
4 geese (technically 2 wives of George and 2 daughters but he's not too particular!)
3 Guinea Fowl including our original hen (Min) and 2 possible suitors (Apollo and Belvedere)
4 newly hatched Buff Orp chicks (pure bred we hope but time will tell)
6 newly hatched ducklings
1 pair of turkeys (Tom and Barbara)

That is 33 birds, total.

Newly built duckling and chick brooder box. A sheet of
house insulation, some old election posters and a rabbit hutch
roof. Load of gaffer tape and Bob's your uncle.

Mammals dept.

3 ewes (Lily, Polly and Myfanwy)
5 lambs (3 ewe lambs, 2 ram lambs). One of these, Rosie Probert is a 'keeper' and will become our replacement ewe as old Polly (9) heads for retirement*.
2 new pigs - 10 weeks old at present. "Oxford Sandy and Black" breed (OSBs) named Somerville and Ross
Guest goat (Nanny Óg) and her week old son Henry Óg (our newest animal).
3 dogs (Deefer, Towser and Poppea)
2 cats (Big fluffy 'Blue' and young lanky pretender, Soldier.

Home made 'hedgerow' wine used up the freezer bags of fruit.

...and then there are the honey bees of course - how could we forget? One colony at present living in a (British) National hive as 'brood and a half'. Probably about 10,000 to 15,000 bees at this time of year but till we get through the cold/damp/wet/late spring we are not counting any "chickens". We got our fingers burned in 2015 with total loss of our previous bees in spring just when we thought we were out of the woods. This, we are told, is when bees die - they do OK in winter when they are pretty dormant (they do not technically hibernate), but run out of food when they start to get active and start flying as temperatures come up above the tens and the crucial 14ºC.

The log mountain almost 'complete'. 

I have been trying, and struggling a bit, to 'wean' the pigs off the mixed, soaked, mollasses'd grain that came with them and onto which they had been weaned from Mum's milk. The breeder gave me a sack of this mix to help the piglets settle in here and instructions to slowly transition them over to my commercial 'nuts' with days on 75%/25%, then 50/50, then 25/75 etc. The pigs were not keen and were not co-operating. They refused my ration and left me with bowls with all Darren's mix gleaned out of them. They seem to eat way less than previous pigs and, to my amazement and alarm, were also refusing all fruit and veg "treats" - apples, carrots etc. I'd find the wedges of apple lying withered and dried up in the left overs.

My kind of Birthday Present!

The moist mix from Darren was starting to go off - it warmed up and smelled decidely "perfumed", then started to go mouldy, so we had to force the issue. Luckily the pigs have now had a change of heart. My pig nuts are now 'OK' apparently and the apple wedges and carrot bits are also vanishing from the food bowls. We may be on the run home to well fed pigs.

The sweet little ducklings need to be taught to swim. Well, not true, exactly - they need to be shown water so that they will swim and get wet, to make sure they then learn the preening behaviour which will let them spread their own natural water-proofing oils all over their feathers. Ducklings hatched in nature are straight way rummaging around in Mum's feathers and pick up the preen-gland oils from her. They hit the water already proofed and float like corks. Their own preen glands take a couple or three weeks to develop, so ducklings hatched in an incubator have a problem. If they get into water, they just waterlog and sink very quickly, as well as getting very cold from the water-skin contact. The breeder/brooder must introduce them to shallow, warm-ish water in a safe way for the first weeks to stimulate the preening behaviour which will coat their duckling-fluff with the oil. Liz is having great fun doing this in our Sitting Room using a cat litter tray (with flat rocks as 'beaches') and a big, water-absorbing rug.

There ends my stock take. In the words of all 'Thank You' speech givers everywhere, I hope I have not forgotten anybody. If I have I will have to sneak back into this post with my tail between my legs and add any forgotten birds or beasts under cover of darkness.

Newest animal, Henry Óg a week old.

*I had always believed that ewes were only good for about ten years of lambing, probably because I know that from my Fallow Deer studies, but I have since heard from an internet smallholder that they know of a ewe who was still going strong aged nineteen and 40 lambs later. This 'retirement' may be some time coming but it will give Rosie a nice few seasons to learn the ropes from her auntie

Hen and Two.

White foxgloves - seed from Anne and Simon.

I was only talking in the last post about work days and all the really good, decent people I had the pleasure of working alongside. So, sad sad news today to learn that one of them, a great friend and team member, Steve Flatt has passed away in a hospice in Kent after a short illness. RIP Steve, taken too soon. Thoughts and sympathies to his wife Jean and the family and to all his friends and anyone who knew him. He will be sadly missed. He and Jean were also the breeders of our eldest bitch, Deefer whose name titles this blog, so we have a nice living memory of the guy and a link back to those better times.

This whole mass of flowers from an original single cheapo
bulb bought from a Supermarket as a pack of three. All three
are now doing this well seperately in our raised bed .

If you have stayed abreast of this blog you will have heard of the exploits of "Hen with One Chick". Well, H+1 has now been trumped by the broody from under the elderberry bush, who now holds the name "Hen with Two". She is still sleeping under the elderberry but is out every day parading her two tiny chicks, one an orange colour that points to a possible Buff Orp pure-bred, one a paler chick which suggests a hybrid Sussex Ponte or Hubbard. Dad will still be a Buff as those are the only roosters currently operating on the holding.

New mum, "Hen and Two",

She seems to be doing a fine job of protecting them and showing them round, finding them food and even leading them into the melée of hens in the yard. I am sneaking out extra rations to them - I wait till they are seperated from the bulk of the flock and slip them a jam-jar lid loaded with finely chopped hard-boiled egg, chick crumb and a bit of hen-grub to keep mum interested. She straight away starts the low clucking which signals a food-find to the babies and they are all over it like a rash. If any other adult hens discover them at the feeding (even 'Hen with One') then mum starts a wide-wing display and drives them off till her little ones have filled their crops. If a rain shower threatens she quickly rounds them up under her skirts to keep them dry till the rain has done. We have hopes that she will be as good as H+1.

Parsnip seedlings.

Meanwhile, the geese have given up on the broodying game and gone back to grazing in the orchard. We are not sad that they hatched nothing this year. I had been stealing the eggs all spring so that they had nothing to go broody on - we even passed some on to Anne as she wanted to hatch a few and they have done OK. We hoped they would not go broody but eventually one did, so we let her have the benefit of the doubt with just 2 eggs. Her sisters subsequently added 4 more but for what ever reason nothing came of this.

Dublin Bay does well against our Kitchen Garden wall.

A third broody has now claimed a nest, this another Buff Orpington hen (it seems that Buffs are doing the broody thing this season all on their own, 3 out of the four so far - no contributions from Marans, Sussex Ponte, mini-Buffs or Hubbards). She has gone broody in the former rabbit 'Maternity Unit' which is actually in the hen house, so I have had to lock her in in the mornings to stop everyone else trying to lay eggs in that nest, She is such a gentle soul that she does not fight them off, but meekly hops down and wanders around clucking disconsolately till they have finished and let her back on. This way she gets a bit of peace (and a stable number of known-start eggs to sit on).

A good stand of Autumn Bliss raspberries. This type are cut
right back down to ground level in February, so all this is new
growth this year.

In the garden a good range of flowers are in full bloom and the veg, after a bit of a slow May, is starting to pick up the pace. The Summer fruiting raspberries did not enjoy the poor spring weather and are looking a bit frazzled and tired-of-leaf, but the flowers have had bees on them so we still might get a crop. More hopeful are the Autumn Fruiting canes which are getting nice and tall and starting to bud up at the top. We are also about to start cropping artichokes, though we seem to have lots of small chokes this year rather than fewer. bigger ones. We will have to make portions up out of a few - normally one choke suffices one person for their 'five a day'.

Lemons and elderflower heads for the brews.

It is finally the elderflower season. It seemed a long time coming on this very late season, where even the hawthorn did not start till 19th May. Liz has been out there cutting a million flower heads and shopping for cheap deals on sugar and lemons. She has had requests for the elderflower cordial, a great favourite of the teenage Silverwoods, but will also be making quite a lot of the elderflower "fizz" - the recipes call it 'champagne', but we make no such high-brow claims.

Elderflower cordial

It is light and very quaffable, and if you can get the 'fizz' just right, it is a bit like a Prosecco. You have to judge when the bucket ferment is almost over and then rack it off. We save the screw-top wine bottles through spring time. The wine is then stood with the tops screwed lightly shut but you need to check it on days 1, 2 and maybe 3, just by opening a few bottles very gently to listen for a gentle "pssst!". Too much and you daren't screw the tops down for good or you get at best bottles going off like fire extinguishers at the table and at worst, exploding. Too little and you have missed the boat and produced a rather thin, very young, flat wine. In the middle and you have a gently sparkling wine which does not fizz up any sediment from the bottom of the bottle and is a gorgeous refreshing drink chilled from the fridge. Sláinte!

Nice little light job for a hot evening. Just spread that
3 and a half tonne of gravel, could you?

Finally, we had our gravel delivered. We'd phoned a number supplied by our friend Mark at the garden centre and I thought the voice sounded familiar. It was only when I started to give the guy directions and said we were in TK Min's old house that he recognised my voice and said "..and didn't I come and shoot your foxes?" and I realised it was our handy man-with-gun driving the lorry. Small world.

A Simple Fencing Job

The 5 geese are allowed on the front lawn now. 

More fencing for us. We decide to run a length of sheep wire along the inside of the new post and rail fence up the drive and around the front lawn. You may recall that this lawn was fenced in with post and rail because neither of us wanted to sit on the 'terrace' out front looking at green high tensile barbed wire, sheep wire and standard de-barked farm-field style fence posts. The post and rail, though, is good for adult sheep which are tall, large-bodied beasties, but would not stop the geese or the baby lambs, who can just dip down on their hunkers and shimmy under the bottom rail.

Rather too much pork belly for we two, but it does lovely
cold left overs. Cous cous salad accompanies.

The answer, in these parts at least is to staple a run of non-high-tensile (i.e. cheaper!) sheep wire along the inside. Not being green (it's just 'galvanised' colour) it dulls down and fades from view but it has the 6 inch square mesh format which can stop lambs, geese and even Westies. The smaller chickens seem to be able to slip through with a bit of a wriggle and a wrestle of the wings. They could also fly over if they only thought about it but one thing we've found with chickens is that if they can see through a fence and then butt up against it and feel it at ground level, then a 3-4 foot fence will stop them. Give them an opaque barrier like a wall or a wooden fence, and they will try the flying thing and find that they can 'hop' over a 6 feet tall barrier with ease. Our Sussex Ponte hens are regularly to be seen on the 6 foot wall of the cattle race and we have pictures of one up on the roof ridge of the goose-house (ten feet up?)

Liz's new baby.

With the post and rail shored up we have been able to mix and match the grazing arrangements a bit. The poor old geese have nearly exhausted the grass in the orchard. "There's not a pick left", as Bob would say, so we have been able to shepherd them round to the lawn for some good, longer stuff to fill their bellies, all be it watching them closely in case they decided to annihilate my precious crocusses. They didn't. The next day we had them in the East Field and the ewes and lamb were let loose into the lawn 'paddock'. The lamb, in particular, seemed to enjoy this.

Bramble-bashing by the veg patch.

Regular readers will know that I have recently savaged the hedge along the east side of this, the hedge which grows from the top of a long-buried stone wall. We now have a steep-sided, 2 foot tall bank with some 2 feet tall, 2 inch diameter, gnarly hawthorn (etc) trunks sticking out of the top. The lamb thinks this is adventure playground stuff - he goes spronging up and over, or weaves along the top like a small boy balancing along the top of a brick wall, while his Mum and Aunt fill their bellies on the lawn grass. We have also seen him challenging his Aunt, 'Little John' style stopping her from coming over the bank by hopping into the way to block her progress. We feel a bit sorry for him as he has no playmates (yet) but his Aunt seems to indulge him and play a bit, limited though she is by her own pregnant bulk. Next year we are determined to get all the lambing, should the lambing gods smile upon us, synchronised, so that the babies can grow up with little chums to play with, and give the Mums a break.

Other than that, we have been trying out the new toy, our brush cutter. We are delighted. It is light enough for Liz to manage it. but powerful enough to do the necessary amount of damage to the brambles, plantains, rushes and nettles (even the young ash and elder suckers). We 'learned it' a bit tentatively in the 'woods' by the drive but got well stuck in by the time we were thrashing along the bramble thicket next to the vegetable patch, tackling the former nettle patch by the muck heap and whacking the rushes at the bottom of the yard leading on to the rain water gulley.

A rooster given to us by a friend to kill
(she can't cope with necking them) gets it.
His name was 'Pineapple'. Are we allowed
to call the curry "Pineapple Chunks"?

We are confident that we will have a much tidier small holding this year and we are looking forward to attacking some new green nettles and Queen Anne's Lace (Cow Parsley) in the woods when they start, docks and rushes and ground elder. I used to enjoy swooping down upon them with the 'Old Father Time' scythe but you could only really use that on tall stuff, patches which were already shouting 'neglect' at any visitors.

We already know that in the bits of woodland where we can get the mower, grass starts to grow, and we love that rather 'Capability Brown' look of the grass and the trees, so we are wondering whether a strimmer used often enough under the trees would lead to a tidy, grassed look (with some planned sweet woodruff, Lady's Mantle, snowdrops, foxgloves, Pulmonaria and cyclamen) rather than the current nettles, ground elder and elder suckers. It might be less 'green' but it should, surely, look more 'deliberate'.

The End of the Year

Last of the cake

Our local lough, Lough Feigh, is full to bursting after recent rain and resounds to the beautiful noise of the 30 to 40 swans who spend their winter there. They are either Whooper or Bewick's Swans (I am not very good on the smaller swans and these two are very similar) and I have not been down to the lough with binoculars for a close look. We just enjoy the musical honking calls which come up on the wind to the lane as I walk the dogs along the top there, and to the front garden. We wonder whether our own geese feel some kind of 'Call of the Wild' yearnings as they hear them.

And so we come to the end of the year. Christmas left overs are starting to run out. The Christmas Day goose has reappeared in a number of guises since, sneaking back as cold meat, then a superb pie and most recently as small jars of 'rilette' (finely shredded meat mixed with apple, garlic and butter, a bit like a paté). The spiced cabbage has brightened up a few meals, served alongside a risotto and the pie. The cake will go a few more slices and the pud will supply a few more portions lubricated with the ice cream.

Chestnuts for the sprouts tonight.

I feel a bit of an urge to sum up the year but I promise to keep it short and sweet; just the one paragraph. In (very) short it's been a really good one for us. The small holding has moved on a-pace in the warm dry weather (the rain is only recent) and we have produced mountains of veg. I am particularly pleased with the onions and spuds and we have a freezer full of beans, peas and calabrese. We have produced a million eggs and plenty of chicken, goose, rabbit and lamb. We fenced the East Field, built the poly-tunnel and completed the pond. We made some new friends and consolidated existing ones. Liz got involved with the local knitting group and has got into knitting and has also expanded her cookery skills into a wealth of cakes and pies. Not everything went 100% to plan, of course. We lost the use of the 2CV. I killed one chain saw but inherited a perfectly good, and superior, replacement. We celebrated with a delicious Christmas. All in all a good 2013. Roll on 2014.

Our surprisingly good, well ripened
and now stored onions

One 'hin' however, will not be seeing 2014. She was one of our old original Sussex Ponte hens which have already given us a brilliant first year of egg laying but have lately gone off the boil. Yesterday this young lady managed to injure herself in a serious and debilitating way we believe, by pecking on sharp piece of wire or broken glass, both of which we have too much of in the soil not yet dug over and cleared. I am not going into any more detail in case you are eating your tea, but suffice to say that we had to cull this girl out and even as I type this, Liz is plucking her in the kitchen. She is going to be a tiny carcass despite being full grown. I doubt if she will be even one kilogram 'oven-ready', way smaller than the hulking Hubbard birds we have been processing most recently. She is a neat shape though, so she is 'petite' in the same way that Guinea Fowl and poussins make small carcasses, rather than scrawny or thin. It will be nice to roast a whole bird between 2 of us, rather than (as with Hubbard birds) having to dismember them first and make 4 separate meals out of them.

Ooops. Despite my care the tractor cuts up
ruts in the soft ground

Not tonight, though, Josephine! Tonight we are on the slow-roasted shoulder of lamb, in this case 'Dora', one of our ewe (they say 'yow' here) lambs.

Finally, I was in this morning to visit our lovely old neighbour, Una, who is still struggling with a finger injured on and infected by a rose thorn in her own garden. I nip round every couple of days to bring turf and logs in to the house from the sheds and today took her round some eggs, leeks, sprouts, parsnip and a beetroot as a mini food parcel. She sits me down in her beautifully old traditional Irish kitchen (range, painted wooden furniture) for 'tay' and home made scones and jam and today she was telling me all about the 'Wren Boys'

Naughty or Nice? Lego from Santa

The Wren Boys is an especially Irish tradition which my UK readers may not have heard of. We had heard of it here but have still not seen it in action and it is now fading fast and may soon pass into memory. It happens on St Stephen's Day (Boxing Day). In times past the 'Wren Boys' would capture a wren and then dress in motley clothing and hats and capes made of straw (like 'Mummers') and parade it round the village knocking on doors and persuading money and goodies out of house owners as a bribe not to harm the bird ("A penny or tuppence would do it no harm...." etc). They would sing special songs, make music and recite appropriate poems.
They would also call round the pubs and 'perform' for the clientele.

More recently no actual wren is used and it is more likely to be the kids going round rather as do Carol Singers in the UK, but at lunchtime in daylight, rather then in the evening. Our friend Charlotte of the mini-horses has done this as a teenager in a group and apparently done quite well out of it. Una tells us she can remember when great gangs of children would go, quite often driven round in cars by parents, but recently the kids have come to enjoy the pub-side of things less. They were, says Una, all quite sweet kiddies and sang and played their penny whistles and other instruments beautifully, but the local 'Herberts' in the pubs of particularly Balla-D, presumably 'with drink taken' would start heckling them and making rude and tasteless comments. The groups Una knows don't go there any more and, in fact, have now dwindled to a few pairs or singles of children being taken to pre-arranged 'friendly' houses to do their thing and get a €5 or so. What ever the story is, none came to see us, so we still have this only at 2nd hand.

Happy New Year! Bliain Nua Sásta Dhaiobh!

The 'Hin' formerly known as....

Three different livestock stories tonight, just to keep you abreast of things feathered and furry here on the 'farm'.

First up I think I posted a while back that one of our Sussex Ponte 'hins' seemed to be bearing the brunt of the rooster, William's love and affection. He was 'treading' her (as they say) so often that his spurs had scratched away big chunks of feather across her wings and shoulders, leaving her with bright pink bald patches which had us a bit concerned she'd get sunburn in the hot weather. She was nicknamed 'Baldy'. Some people make tough cloth 'saddles' for the hen when this happens to protect her back from his rough treatment, but the better advice is to get more hens and spread the load a bit, naturally. Without really meaning to, that is exactly what we did by obtaining the 2 Marans birds with whom William has fallen deeply in love. He now favours these ladies and has dropped Baldy like a hot potato and, we were amused to note, done her a big favour in the feather department. All her bald patches are now covered in new feathers 'in pin' (still in their sheaths). We will have to keep an eye on Bubble and Squawk to make sure they don't start going bald!

Meanwhile, it being a lovely warm sunny day here in Co. Roscommon we decided to let the new chicks out in one of the rabbit runs, to feel the sun on their backs and get a chance to scratch at some rabbit-grazed short grass. They loved it and their 'Mum' was able to do them some good scratch-training.

If the speed of response by chicks has anything to do with how much their Mum loves them and stays protecting them, then these 8 babies are streets ahead of the 5 ducklings, who wouldn't scratch no matter what she tried. Ducklings just don't. With these chicks one dip of her beak and a single cluck had all 8 whizzing towards her on their surprisingly mobile legs and 8 little beaks diving in by hers to see what she'd turned up. Soon we will be letting the family out properly to free range. We have no fears from cats or the other chickens and we seem to be doing OK so far with regard to dogs on leads, foxes, mink etc. No! Our concerns are actually for dear ol' William the rooster, who is so keen to re-acquaint with Betty after her incubation 'holiday' that he chases her, tries to scrabble on board and would knock the chicks flying as she leapt to protect them. He's a big solid boy, and they could get badly hurt or killed, so we will wait a while till the babies get a bit bigger, tougher and speedier in their evasion runs.

You'll possibly know of the rather thin time we are having of the 'meat rabbits', born to Goldie in mid June. We had about 9 originally but they do not seem to be thriving and, although they look very healthy, one by one they have died for no apparent reason. We just find them lying on their side, stiff and chilled in the morning and up to now have disposed of the tiny bodies and moved on. We were putting it down to some internal, developmental problem possibly born out this being Goldie's first litter, and the fierce heat wave that we had during her final weeks of pregnancy and the babies' first weeks of life. By last weekend we were down to 4 babies left alive, 3 white albino and one dark rabbit-brown. None of the deaths had been foresee-able, they seemed to go from healthy to dead without us seeing any in-between sick stages or symptoms. By contrast the 12 baby bunnies of Padfoot and Ginny are thriving and growing well.

Then we had another death last week while the Silverwoods were here and this time we saw it coming. I went to move the run one morning to new grass and this rabbit was very pathetic looking and lethargic, not bothering to run for cover as I loomed over him. I nudged him into cover out of the rain but later he was back out. We rescued him to a warm dry box in the girls' caravan out of sight of the small children, but by lunchtime, Em-J reported hearing him wheezing and by 1 pm he was dead. We talked to Mentor Anne and she wondered whether liver fluke might be an issue, this ground having been grazed by sheep last year (all be it lambs treated for fluke and that, way back in December).

We decided to autopsy the rabbit and the girls decided they would like to see that. Em-J has a scientific mind and is choosing school/college options aimed at giving her a possible career in forensic archaeology. She'd done some biology but never dissected a mammal before. J-M was just on a bit of a thrill-seek and was not going to miss this one! I talked them though how we would open up the body cavity and what would be where and calmed their fears that there would not be blood and gore everywhere. We donned neoprene 'murderer' gloves and in we went. In the event the liver proved to be as clean as a whistle, very healthy looking with no flukes or damage visible as we sliced it up. Lungs, heart, diaphragm, spleen, kidneys and gut all looked normal to me.

The one feature which did strike me and I have certainly never seen (and I've skinned and gutted a few rabbits!) was that the bladder was full with wee, inflated to the size of the top of your thumb, though not inflamed or angry-red looking. It just looked like the boy had not had a wee for a while, but I am no expert and this might be standard for these rabbits. Anne and I were both a bit concerned that the bladder would have emptied in death, so a blocked duct may be indicated and again, this might point to an infection or a developmental issue. We do not know where to go with this but I will probably autopsy any more dead ones we may get. It was an interesting exercise for the girls, too and they were both pleased to have seen it and not to have run out in horror.

We hope, of course, that the remaining three babies make it through.

Of Fickle Men and Champagne

Our rooster, William the Conqueror has fallen head over heels in love with the new Marans girls and pretty much abandoned his former regular 'girl-fiends', the Sussex Ponte 'Lovely Girls'. He spends all day with the Marans showing them where to scratch, dust-bathing with them and following them or leading them about. He tries to chat them up into going 'back to my place' in the evening but he has not yet cracked that one and by about 7:30 pm he gives up and goes 'indoors' leaving them to their final hour of wandering till they eventually go to roost in their own house (the former goose-box).

We think he must then dream about them all night and can't wait to find them again in the morning. As I open the pop-hole, he's right there inside and shoots out like an Exocet missile, runs up the cattle race and starts strutting about and crowing near the goose box. As I open the goose box pop-hole, and the Marans wander out to greet the day he sprints over and generally 'nails' one of them within feet of the pop hole. He seems very happy and doesn't appear to give a fig at the 'hard-to-get' antics or down-right vamping by the Lovely Girls trying to get him back. We have to admit to a rather shameful sympathy with him there - we are completely impressed by these Marans who lay one egg each EVERY day, so more eggs, in fact. than all the lovely girls between them (who often score zero, or one; all be it, Broody Betty is currently on broody leave).

The LGs are, you will recall, very sporadic at present; they miss too many days, or lay from height (Lucy Long-Drop), or they lay eggs with only part of the shell, or they lay among the nettles in the woods. They are, in short a frustrating pain in the butt and if you asked us now we would describe them as rubbish 'layers'. Mentor Anne tells us that as 'hatchery hybrids' the Sussex Ponte is designed to lay around 300 eggs a year but under indoor hatchery conditions where everything is controlled - day length, light levels, humidity and definitely nutrition. Furthermore they'd be bred to perform for about 18 months at peak lay before being culled out, exhausted in commercial egg-laying terms. Here they are out in all weathers and real day lengths and eating all manner of protein in scratch in the fields, sometimes ignoring the feed we give them, certainly being choosy and picky around the 'layers pellets' even though these are now Pedigree Foods's finest organic. So, realistically, when the 'Young Ones' (the "8-ball" as they are now known) come of age and decide to be females, they may replace some of the Lovely Girls in our laying flock. We will probably not do Sussex Pontes again and I'd do my best to dissuade anyone who suggested they might. If young Pontes in their prime can be out-layed under a free-range system by 5 year old Marans, then pure-bred are the girls for me and we hope that the Jersey Giants and Buff Orpingtons in the 8-ball don't let us down.

As we come into July, the elder trees in our hedges are all coming into full blossom and with the sun shining warmly our thoughts turned to elder-flower cordial and elder-flower champagne. Liz made the cordial last year and we loved it. As well as using it as cordial you can freeze it in plastic milk bottles for later use and/or freeze it in ice cube trays to be dropped into a glass of chilled sparkling water. The champagne we have enjoyed at Anne's place and we know it is also made by Carolyn so while I went and collected a bag full of 'fully open' flower heads Liz surfed up a recipe and dug out the wine making gear to give it a good sloosh out with Milton's fluid.

Both these recipes use just the flowers, water and juice and zest of lemons (Liz threw a lime in too as we had one) as well as sugar. The advice is that the champagne would get going on the naturally occurring yeasts in the flowers but you can supplement with bakers yeast if it is a bit slow to get going. You can either use swing-lid 'Grolsch' style bottles, or even plastic fizzy drink bottles though you are advised to release the pressure a few times during the in-bottle ferment as it can all get a bit lively otherwise.

In the sunshine too, I decided to have a little tinker with hay making. We have grass, sunshine and breeze, and the local merchants are still out of hay following the spring fodder crisis, so I am very low on bedding for baby rabbits and for layers nest boxes. I scythed down a load of grass and spread it thinly over a couple of my chicken-wire rabbit-run panels  which I leant up at 45 degrees on the orchard fence. It was drying quite well but then, wouldn't you know it? lashed down with rain all night. That's great for the water-butts, but not ideal for the hay making. Never mind. If it gets ruined I have plenty more grass and there will be many more sunny days - next week is forecast to be a hot one.

In the rabbit department, Ginny's and Padfoot's little gangs of babies are now a month old and almost permanently out of the boxes and eating the grass in the runs, so we assume they are nearly weaned. We have not seen any nursing lately. This means it is time for a nice job - that of getting the babies used to handling. If we are to sell any of these as pet rabbits then they need to meet the customers as calm, friendly, cuddly bunnies, not wriggling terrified scaredy-cats, so the plan is to go and handle as many of them as you can catch each day.

There are currently 12 babies to do this to, 7 with Ginny and 5 with Padfoot. Goldie has another 7 on line but they are a bit young yet at under 3 weeks and not out on the grass yet. I seem to be over run in Facebook by friends who are volunteering to come here and hug a bunny!

Meanwhile, finally some good news on the red algal bloom in the big pond. It seems to be dropping out at last, the water clearing so that we can now see the planters on the bottom. The algae themselves seem to fall like dust onto the rubber liner and then are rippled up like a miniature version of beach-sand ripples into rice-grain sized ridges, presumably by the wave action in the pond. Fascinating.

Maternity Unit

Behind the scenes of all these descriptions of routine normality, we have 2 exciting little dramas going on. The first is the broody hen, the 2nd is the rabbit nest. Both are nail-biting, wait and see stories and neither are yet very photogenic.

The broody hen featured in the previous post. She is, like all our hens, a Sussex Ponte, a modern utility hybrid designed by one of the big commercial hatcheries to produce 300 eggs a year with no health issues and with almost all the tendency to go broody bred out of her. An egg laying machine. This is probably why so far, in any attempts this year by any of them to go broody, the hen has generally got bored after a few days and gone back to the girl's gang, abandoning her eggs to go cold. Not, it seems, this time. This girl went broody on the 30th Sept and is still sitting tight an a clutch of 10 eggs, brooding them like a pro. Well, the best sort of 'pro' she can be in the circumstances, her being a bit thick and silly with it.

She gets off the eggs once each day to go eat, drink and scratch a bit in the run before hopping back into the nest box BUT does not always get into the correct box. This happens particularly when one of the other hens decides to lay her egg while Miss Broody is out, so she is sitting on the clutch when Miss B comes back. She can occasionally be found brooding an empty nest next door to a little stack of 10 eggs and on one occasion was sitting in the end box with her neck craned round the divider, looking at the clutch and presumably wondering how to shuffle her feet to draw them round into her compartment. Dad has to keep a close and regular eye and correct her little mistakes lest the eggs chill but so far we think we are OK.

If that's true then we might be seeing some eggs 'pipping' on around the 21st, just in time for a visit from Niece Madeleine who is over for a visit on Monday 22nd. If that happens, we then have all the excitement of learning how to keep tiny chicks alive in October and November. We are hoping Miss Broody will become Miss Excellent, Caring Mother or we will have to be messing about with heat lamps and the like. Wish us luck.

In the Rabbit Nest story we have a lot less information. Rabbits are notorious for destroying the nest and babies if you disturb them so that, having discovered the nest back on the 7th Oct, we have basically built a roof over the area with corrugated and then retreated to watch and wait, while increasing the 'meusli' feeds to almost ad-lib status in case Padfoot should need the extra energy in order to feed milk to the kittens. We just see the grown up rabbits bouncing around in their run and periodically Padfoot sloping off to the compost heap where the nest is and we HOPE she is doing that attentive mother thing rabbits do of un-burying their nest and the babies, getting into the nest to feed them and the re-burying the fur-ball with the babies inside back under a plug of grass and compost.

We have no way of knowing if this is what IS going on. The rabbits may be just retreating to the hay of the compost after eating their extra rations of food to sleep it off just because it's nice and dry under the corrugated. The nest may be ancient history by now. All we can do is wait, but Dad says his nerves are shredded from watching the young cats prowling around, he imagines catching a whiff of milky baby rabbits and warm nest hay and thinking evil thoughts. When they do prowl, Dad thinks he sees the rabbits getting anxious, milling in the nest area, rebuffing curious cat noses by punting them with their own noses but they might just be saying 'hello'. It's a nervous time. Dad has now decided that next weekend, when the bunnies should be 2 weeks old and no longer pink, naked, blind and too vulnerable to being killed by Padfoot, Mum and Dad will lift the lid, have a proper explore to see if there is an active nest and, if there is, rescue it, the babies and Padfoot into the Maternity Unit in the calf house, warm, dry, rat proof and protected from cats.

Wish us luck on that one, too. We'll give you more info on all this when things happen.

Deefs